The Day the World Exploded
by automaticstop
Summary: Set in the 'Five Years Gone' universe. ‘Amid the sirens and the screams, he thinks he hears Sylar laughing’ Mylar


Title: The Day the World Exploded

Pairing: Sylar/Mohinder

Disclaimer: Don't own them, sadly

Warnings: Mohinder's going a little crazy, and Sylar's a little intrusive, but it's all fun and games apart from that. Spoilers for the end of 5YG, and one naughty word

* * *

The Day the World Exploded

**Five minutes after the bomb – **

Mohinder wakes up in a pile of rubble and ash. There's a shape next to him, a body twisted and bent into a grotesque shape. He feels for a pulse, and finds none. He doesn't look at its face.

His throat burns and the light hurts his eyes, but he realises he's not injured badly. He wonders whether the gashes on his arms will leave him with scars forever, though. He wonders if there is a 'forever' any more.

Amid the sirens and the screams, he thinks he hears Sylar laughing.

He stands up shakily, grabbing onto the remains of a nearby wall to support him, and moves out in to the new world.

**Five days after the bomb –**

Today is the day that Mohinder is going to decide the future with Nathan. He is going to suggest his plans to stop something like this from ever happening again, plans he will dedicate the rest of his life to, and he knows that Nathan will agree. He also knows that Nathan will look pale, tired and like a drowning man. Catching a glimpse of his reflection in the shards of a shattered window, he discovers that he looks the same. They will survive though, because they have to. Because there isn't anyone else. The new world, Sylar's creation, will get through this, somehow. Even if it has been bathed in blood, and ash, and loss. Even though it belongs to Sylar. (That's alright, because he does too)

He walks through the destroyed street that leads to the remains of Nathan's office, side-stepping beggars and looters and desperate officials. Out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees Sylar, walking a few steps behind him.

"It wasn't me, you know," the fake Sylar says, "the bomb."

Mohinder doesn't turn around to face this echo of the man who exploded, and instead says:

"Well, you would say that."

He imagines that Sylar falters, and then smirks, and then is gone.

**Five weeks after the bomb – **

When Nathan tells him who the bomb really was, he wonders whether the Sylar inside his head will ever stop laughing. He laughs too, although it sounds hysterical even to his own ears, filled with panic and pain. Nathan watches him calmly throughout, but once Mohinder stops laughing he can no longer meet his eyes.

Sylar, standing behind him once more, says,

"I told you so,"

Mohinder doesn't reply.

He decides that he's finally gone insane when he's flanked by Sylar on his left and Sylar-as-Zane on his right as he walks away from Nathan's office.

"Perhaps you shouldn't doubt me so much," Sylar says, his tone smug.

Mohinder doesn't stop moving, forcing his legs to keep going and trying to remember how to breathe.

"You look tired, Mohinder. You should get some rest," Sylar-as-Zane says, his tone concerned.

He imagines that his heart stops beating momentarily, and his head hurts. He lets himself stop, tilting his head up to the sky and closing his eyes. He feels something ghost across his skin, and he thinks of snow falling on the car park of a motel in the mountains.

It takes him hours to fully wash away the ash that still falls from the New York sky off his skin.

****

Five months after the bomb –

Nathan's only been President for a few months when his wife dies. Mohinder is at the funeral, stands at Nathan's side during the ceremony, a comforting hand placed on the grieving man's shoulder. Nathan shudders underneath his touch, but he stands tall and masks his emotions to the others present, the small shivers the only evidence of how intense his emotions are.

Nathan keeps him close during the later celebrations. Mohinder doesn't mind.

Nathan is never the same after the loss.

Mohinder spends more time with Nathan now. They sit together, in Nathan's enormous lounge or in Mohinder's cluttered lab, drinking and talking of better times and people long gone. Sometimes, Mohinder holds Nathan's gaze for too long, unable to look away. (Like an animal caught in an oncoming car's headlights, trapped and kept in place by Sylar's dark gaze alone)

Sometimes, he lets Nathan kiss him, harsh and demanding (Zane leans forward and kisses him so gently it makes his heart ache)

One night, Mohinder lets exhaustion overtake him, and when he wakes up there's a blanket thrown across him and Nathan is gone. Sylar is still there, though, standing in the corner with his arms folded.

"If you think about it," he says, "the man who exploded did you a favour."

Mohinder frowns, refusing to look fully at the image.

"And what makes you say that?" he demands.

The image shrugs, before gesturing around him.

"Here you are, fucking the President, your research respected world-wide, when a few months ago I was the only one you could talk to."

He cocks his head curiously to one side, his expression triumphant.

"But then again, perhaps things haven't changed so drastically."

Mohinder finishes his drink and stands up, before questioning the smirking man,

"When are you going to leave me alone? You've been dead for five months now, you know."

Sylar says nothing, and so Mohinder continues,

"You died in the explosion. You died."

Sylar smiles, a predatory leer that makes Mohinder's heart beat faster than he'd like to admit.

"What you mean to ask is, 'when will you let me go?', right?"

Disgusted, more with himself than anything, Mohinder snaps,

"You're just an after- image. You're not in control anymore."

He leaves the room, but he can still hear the man's laughter in his head. He doesn't sleep for the next few nights.

****

Five years after the bomb –

The world continues to move wearily onwards, dragging Mohinder and Nathan along with it. Events spiral further and further out of control with each passing day and they harden and crystallize, and try to forget.

Nathan's hand, when it touches Mohinder, is cold.

(He keeps the key to his old apartment in his pocket, although the building it unlocked is gone. Nathan laughs when he finds it.)

Sometimes he recites a list of the people he's lost, in his head, when he can't sleep. Instead of sleeping. The list seems to grow longer every day.

He doesn't really sleep anymore anyway, and once Nathan announces the change in plan, he's glad he doesn't. He's not sure he deserves the rest, since he's failed them all. Sylar, sitting on the edge of the unused bed, doesn't say anything at all.

The hope of change, when it hits, makes him reel.

****

Five years, five weeks and five minutes after the bomb –

The not-Nathan is still President. He feeds the public lie after lie about what happened, and what is happening, but he smiles as he lies and so they believe him. Sylar always was good at lying. (Even now he can see Zane smiling at him and he knows he'll do everything he can to keep him safe)

Mohinder is still waiting for the world to end for a second time. He wonders what will happen when Hiro Nakamura manages to change events, manages to stop the bomb. At first he had thought the end would come with a bright light, a light that purifies them before ripping them apart. Now he thinks that it will be simpler than that: the sudden existence of nothing at all. He looks out of the window and waits for everything to cease to exist.

Sylar dislikes it when he thinks like this, and Sylar always knows when he does. He imagines that _that_ has something to do with Peter's death, a way of letting the other into his head more than ever before. He finds it difficult to remember a time when he wasn't there, however; and it hurts to think about Peter, and so he doesn't.

Sylar comes into the room, as he always does when Mohinder wonders about the destruction of their universe. He smiles at him, but it's cold and hard and hurts to look at. He looks at Mohinder without speaking, and Mohinder knows that he's visited to remind him that they are still alive. His presence and his smile say silently to Mohinder – 'it hasn't ended yet, has it?'

Sylar had come to him back then, too. The real Sylar, burning brighter than the image that had resided in Mohinder's mind for so long, had stood in front of him amid the destruction. His hand, when he held it out, was still covered in traces of Peter's – Parkman's? – blood. Mohinder had taken it anyway. When Sylar had kissed him, a sharp taste on his tongue, he had given in, of course. The world will end soon, he'd thought. This is fine, because it will end.

The 'cure' goes ahead, but that's fine too, because it won't have (hasn't) happened.

Sylar pulls him close, pressing Mohinder's hand against his chest, over his heart. His hand is too hot, the pressure too much, and his nails dig in to Mohinder's fingers, but he doesn't try to move away. He allows Sylar to wrap him up in a tight embrace, bodies pressing close, close, closer. Mohinder rests his chin on Sylar's shoulder, and it's alright, because the world will end (is ending). Inside his head, and against his ear, Sylar laughs softly and tightens his grip. Mohinder closes his eyes, and imagines that he is nothing.


End file.
